Forensic Engineer. I take stuff apart to see why it failed (causing a fire or a water loss). Then I write a report saying whether it was a manufacturer's defect, installation error, or user abuse. Insurance companies then use the report to try to collect money (subrogate) from manufacturers/installers to offset the payment they make to the insured. Sometimes I have to go on fire scene investigations, and there is potential for testifying in court.

Project Manager/Designer and sometimes Engineer (small scale structural work). I'm not licensed in the state I live/work in, so I'm very careful about titles.

I'd say my work is 20% drafting (we have no dedicated drafters, just a designer and 2 engineers that know AutoCAD), 70% design, 5% project management, and 5% "whatever". Even when I do drafting, I'm usually exercising engineering judgement to a degree - it's usually left up to me to design connections etc, at least for the first draft.

Interests:Mississippi State Sports, New Orleans Saints, St. Louis Cardinals

Discipline:Mechanical

Posted 17 May 2011 - 04:33 PM

I'm the "somebody else" in "that's somebody else's job".

My official title is Senior HVAC Engineer, although I haven't actually performed any detailed engineering work in close to 6 months.

My unofficial titles are: Project Manager (here, do my job, and send it back to me to send to everyone else, thanks!)Market Researcher (hey, give me a list of every company within 250 miles with 15MM in revenue and 1500+ employees, thanks!)IT Systems Administrator (hey, Jim's phone won't work, the conf. rm internet won't work, I need a thingy to plug my stick thingys in, and my computer won't boot up, thanks!)Web Designer (hey, we need to redesign our website to reflect a new division that will constitue 45% of our total revenues next year, can you do this by tomorrow? thanks!)Maintenance Technician (hey, I need this whiteboard hung, and can you look over this punch list of things that are supposed to be completed, thanks!)Forklift (hey, can you take this box downstairs, thanks!).

I do site/civil, land development, public works, infrastructure rehab, etc. and everything that entails. We're a small firm, so I pretty much do my own drafting, research, reports, and that sorta stuff.

Mechanical Consultant, we are a small firm specializing in Heavy Industry, mainly my work is in piping systems, but Industrial throws a bit of everything at you (HVAC/Mech Design) and we also have a lot of maritime (dock work) and permitting work.

That, and I'm currently involved in all the welding engineering functions for domestic new nuclear construction, e.g. writing welding procedures, reviewing specs, developing process parameters, installation planning for piping systems, steam turbines, structural modules, etc. Occasionally, I get to do some fun stuff, like play with robots, lasers, and equipment R&D. Most of my time is spent going back to the designer and asking "what the hell were you thinking?"

Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.

Design and Draw up plans for something that will not be built according to those plans

Agree. I also waste tax payer money by being directed to do everything as inefficiently as possible, therefore loaded with mistakes, who no one is responsible for, which is then passed on to the Contractor, who wastes more tax payer money trying to fix the problem (or causes more mistakes)...and the best part of it is that no one wants to try anything new to change this. Sorry...little vent. Little teeny tiny vent.

Concrete Quality Control Engineer is the title. Work for a concrete producer and design mixes, analyze aggregates, try to optimize our materials, review specs, etc. Nothing too exciting but I get involved in different aspects of the construction industry so it's OK.

Here is how it works. Customers complain about loosing power, I start an investigation checking feeder alarms, work orders at the operations center, and voltage readings in the area at the times of the "outages". If necessary will install a PQ meter( nothing than a volt recorder with a few more gadgets) just to tell the costumer that they loose power because a storm. Sometimes will find interesting stuff like a feeder breaker with a bad control relay, the THD is too high (total harmonic distortion), their new chillers are too sensitive to voltage fluctuations, and/or there are fecking branches in the feeder.

It is not boring at all. I am asking myself why did not do this crossover earlier in my career.

I design gas analyzers, thermocouple/thermistor based measurement devices, dataloggers, etc. Occasionally, I'll delve into controls, but not often. Day to day work is mostly a combination of embedded and application level programming, circuit board layout and design, and analyzing data that we've logged during our gas experiments.

Well, I'm only an intern, but I worked at GM. I counted how many dies were sitting in the yard and scrapped a few(nearly 1 million pounds worth). And there are still a few hundred more. They offered me a job for next summer. Being GM, they probably lost the file and want me to count them up again. And right now I'm working at this Dr. Suess designed maze of pipes that Marathon calls an "oil refinery." I just had an interview for an intern position in the product design department at Ford, I told the interviewer I would like to be working with the Mustang. He said, "Vehicle Dynamic testing on the Boss 302?" "Yessir!"

for the past 6 years i was a pm for a small general contractor in chicago and i ran a bunch of small jobs anywhere from 50k to 5M in value. mostly schools and gov't jobs. mostly mech and electrical upgrades as well as some basic ada stuff. mostly what i really did was babysit for carpenters, electrcians, tinners and fitters.

just got a new job a month ago working for the nations' third largest telecom provider, do end of life analysis on their critical infrastructure, MEP assets. its better.